Sentence Examples:
He had a heavy, sleepy, bantering expression, and he was always wool-gathering.
Ingenious repartee, acute remarks, admirable banter, pictures sketched with brilliant precision, all sparkled and flowed without elaboration, were poured out without disdain, but without effort, and were exquisitely expressed and delicately appreciated.
For the plain man who shies at surplice and stole, the Sun Dial is a very real pulpit, whence, amid excellent banter, he hears much that is purging and cathartic in a high degree.
His never-failing humor, and love of pleasantry or kind-hearted banter, supplied the place of Rousseau's expedient of weaving lace-strings, when in company where it was difficult, if not impossible to maintain conversation that would interest the whole party.
Apart from the traditional satiric blend of verbal banter and polemic, which has received ample commentary, his use of established literary modes further enhances the colloquies, making them especially diverting for his audience and interesting for us.
She tried to smile down his aggressiveness, succeeding partially, in that he subdued the quarrelsomeness of his voice and manner to that affectation of banter behind which he concealed habitually his real self, and by which he most easily deceived her.
His was the flexible intellect which without effort and without pedantry can, on notable occasions, show itself the master of the situation, and which, in more familiar intercourse, knows how to lend itself with inimitable grace to the lightest banter.
And now by wise questioning, by judicious revelation, by skillful concealment, by ingenious supposition, by generous raillery, by banter, by jest, by argument and by magnetic energies, the teacher stirs the student into supreme conditions of receptivity and activity.
Franklin, on the other hand, in a familiar tone of playful banter, vindicates its utility, alleging that it is mightily 'convenient to be a rational animal, who knows how to find or invent a plausible pretext for whatever it has an inclination to do.'
Twenty years afterwards, when he had outgrown these little affectations, and was penning the amusing passage in which he banters Lope's childish pedantry, the brilliant humorist must surely have smiled as he remembered his own performances in the same kind.
He seems to be a lively, jocular little fellow, who is always jesting and bantering, and when half a dozen different individuals are sporting about in the same orchard, I often imagine that they might represent the persons dramatized in some comic opera.
It was none of the ordinary kind, a little anarchistic, if one might judge from the awkward pen-sketch of a hideous grinning skeleton-skull held by cross-bones which served as an illustration to the bantering text that followed, in a rather cramped girlish hand.
They would fain have known who our people were, and whence they came; but not a man in the sloop would answer them to any question they asked, but in such a manner as let them think themselves bantered and jested with.
Jim was flattered by her open preference, dazzled by her bright eyes and glowing cheeks, and piqued by her bantering manner, for she still implied that he might be allowed indulgences because of his beardless, boyish face and his seeming ingenuousness.
In the roadway outside the inn rosy-cheeked peasant-girls, in their prim, bright costumes, were exchanging pleasant banter with the boys, while the older men lounged around in groups, with hands in pockets, engaged in talking gossip at intervals between puffs of tobacco-smoke.
In all countries enactments have been levelled against the excesses of ejaculation, but the true instruments for keeping them in bounds, assuming there to be an actual necessity for such treatment, has been shown to be the voice of ridicule and the keen banter of satire.
With pleasure; because it will interest all here, whereas among our own bantering fellows at Gibraltar it would only have subjected me, perhaps, to jibes and jokes, and all that sort of thing, from those who were, perhaps, more thoughtless than myself.
Besides their incessant dances and feasts, great and small, they were continually visiting, spending most of their time in their neighbors' houses, chatting, joking, bantering one another with witticisms, sharp, broad, and in no sense delicate, yet always taken in good part.
Among the men the bravos or bullies often were dandies also in the backwoods fashions, wearing their hair long and delighting in the rude finery of hunting-shirts embroidered with porcupine quills; they were loud, boastful, and profane, given to coarsely bantering one another.
He did nothing that was manifestly unfair, but was capable of taking advantages which most people would have thought mean; and he made defeat more hard to bear because he exulted over the vanquished with the coarse banter that youths find so difficult to endure.
No attitude he might have assumed could have been better calculated to dispel awkwardness and force into the background the seriousness of the two women, whose interests were so inextricably entangled with his own, than the merry, bantering one he adopted when with them.
His off-hand mode of speech was always precise, emphatic, ingenious: his laugh, which was frequent rather than otherwise, had a sincerity of banter, but no real depth of sense for the ludicrous; and soon ended, if it grew too loud, in a mere dissonant scream.
It is unlikely that Max understood all the other's phrases, but he understood the lenient, bantering tone that had in it a touch of something bordering upon affection, and with a gracious eagerness he stepped forward and slipped his hand through the proffered arm.
To suppress this, laws, Acts of Parliament, and proclamations are baubles and banters, the laughter of the lewd party, and never had, as I could perceive, any influence upon the practice; nor are any of our magistrates fond or forward of putting them in execution.
He even doubts its being genuine; both because he knows it to be opposite to all his sentiments with regard to me, to whom he desires earnestly to be reconciled, and because it is too absurd and extravagant, and seems to be contrived rather as a banter upon him.
Women sauntered the length of the street and back again for the pleasure of picking out the best and cheapest bundle of rhubarb, or lettuce, the biggest and hardest cabbage, the most appetizing rasher; they compared notes, and bantered each other on purchases.
There were soothsayers and philosophers, slaves, attendants, and courtiers; and among them all, with banter, jest, and laughter, walked the young nobles of Macedon, bosom friends of the king, who had defied Philip for his sake and were now reaping their reward.
There were shops, with signs swinging over them, that displayed a better sort of ware; and lads of all ages, from thirteen upwards, in the tabard of clerks, were strolling about, buying or examining goods, or exchanging a rough sort of banter with the townsmen.
The insolence of this shallow Switzer's attempt to banter Mead, we may imagine, was treated with contempt, as the work described has not been handed down to us; and few tracts are permitted to be scarce for any other reason than because they are worthless.
The professor, when he perceived Don Rocco, came to a stand, with his legs well apart, his hands clasped behind his back, silently wagging his head and his shoulders from right to left, and smiling with an inexpressible mixture of condolence and banter.
The lordly, triumphant manner with which he bantered Gladstone for his dealings in the Straits of Malacca, the demonstrative confidence with which he took victory for granted, and the magnetism of his personal bearing, made an impression on me quite unique in my experience of men.
When the Cockney, who appeared to be downright proud of his ability to keep his "pecker up," found banter to be unproductive, he would assume a tone of extreme sympathetic feeling, but this was so obviously unreal as to be more productive of laughter than his outspoken sallies.
Night after night, with a dogged perseverance which neither towering barriers in the way of unbelievably long words nor the bantering ridicule of his fellows could affect, the red-headed man sat at the table in the bunk-house under the swinging-lamp and conned "Macbeth."
This address, in a merry, bantering tone, so different from the fierce burst of abuse which he anticipated, rather took Vince aback; and he was the more staggered when the man held out his hand naturally enough, which Vince gripped, Mike doing precisely the same.
A certain quiet play of sportive fancy, developing at intervals into banter, was sometimes observable in his talk with the younger and more familiar of his acquaintances, but for the most part his conversation was serious, and, during the time I knew him, often sad.
It was rather the old war of repartee which they had waged with so much satisfaction to themselves on the occasion of their first meeting, the same exchange of banter, of merry jests accompanied by gleeful laughter; but to-day their manner told of much familiarity.
If to make life easier by making it pleasanter, if to outwit trouble by gay banter, if with satire that smiles but never stings to correct foibles and to quicken good impulses; if to deepen and strengthen human sympathy, is not to be a human benefactor, what makes one?
Ragging banter and jest and worse than jest and grim defiance are exchanged between the trenches when they are within such easy hearing distance of each other; but always from a safe position behind the parapet which the adversaries squint across through their periscopes.
It does my heart good to hear you speak with such distinct and manly emphasis on a subject, which, though it is one of the burning questions of the day, is too often treated irreverently, or altogether dismissed with a few sentences of languid banter or cheap sarcasm.
He could not resist the temptation to shout out some bantering remark to the men upon the beach whom he could not see, and soon his voice was sounding across the dark water, bearing impolite messages to the innkeeper and a few choice words for themselves.
One thing only appeared certain, that whatever opinion he chose to take up, he was able to make good either by the foils or the cudgels, by gross banter or nice distinctions, by a well-timed mixture of paradox and common-place, by an appeal to vulgar prejudices or startling skepticism.
The young men at the first thought themselves bantered, but, seeing that the lady spoke in good earnest, they made answer joyfully that they were ready, and without losing time about the matter, forthright took order for that which they had to do against departure.
A note is added, in which Webster with grave banter offers a suit of clothes to any English or American reviewer who will find a man capable of explaining the little word by, stating its primary signification and its true sense in its several uses and applications.
Behind him, cheerful as fools, their bodies racking with weariness, their faces drawn and gaunt, knowing that their labors were not half over, rode the outfit, exchanging chaff and banter in an effort to fool themselves into the delusion that they were fresh and "chipper."
This banter, let it be understood, was quite a different thing from the chaff of to-day, which in most cases is little more than silly comment on personal peculiarities, or criticism of a very primitive and obvious kind which sometimes sinks to the level of childish teasing.
He perceives their friendship to be sorely tried, and on the point of crumbling; and as men muster to repair a dyke, so his resource is prompt, drawn from a soul that can make even a ghost companionable, and no match at all for any bantering mood of his.
After a few more evasive remarks, in which he succeeded in drawing out the other more fully, and causing him the more completely to commit himself, Bart threw aside all bantering, and proceeded to relate all his discoveries relative to the contemplated movement of the court party.
It is very likely that he would have declared himself ready to put up with any amount of discomfort to be able to gratify his love of investigation; but all were far too disheartened and distressed to care to banter him upon the subject on which he was so sensitive.
His heroines are ideal fairy queens, his heroes are all visionary and chivalrous nincompoops; and even, though we know that much of it is whimsical banter and nonsensical fancy, there is an air of refined extravaganza in these books which may continue to give them a lasting charm.
These furnished a pleasant dessert, enlivened by the jests of Fritz and Jack, who, being the climbers, did not spare Doctor Ernest, who had contented himself with looking up at them; and even now, regardless of their banter, he was lost in some new idea.
There would be banter, quick and smart as a whip, a scuffle, a clumsily placed kiss, laughter, another scuffle, and a kiss that found its mark somehow, then a saunter together down the scented loaning while the June moon rode high and the crickets sang.
With this grave banter Lowell goes on to instance cases where the Sacred Parasol has caused a shifting of relations in the twilight created by it, and warns people of the danger they would be in if exposed to the direct rays of the Sun of Righteousness.
This form, already the lightest part of the sonata and symphony, already consecrated to the expression of the composer's gayest and most graceful thoughts, needed only to be made plastic enough to include fantasy and banter in order to give free scope to Beethoven's most frolicsome moods.
When we woke, with the slanted moon rays on the back corner of the coach behind me, she cuddled to me luxuriously, patted me and presently whispered, in a bantering, roguish tone which I detected even in her softest whisper: "You remember that old sweetheart of yours?"
Flower to the indulgence of a form of matrimonial banter which was not unlike the endearments he bestowed upon his horses, and which, when you knew that he loved the little quaint woman with all his heart, you were able to translate into more customary modes of affection.
It seems that he had been courting my fair guide, and after the period she had fixed for her final answer to his declaration, she had bantered him with a refusal, which her solicitude for his life plainly showed was far enough from her real intentions.
The banter, though given in jest, was too much for this member of a craft that can always be depended on to do foolish things; and when we rejoined the outfit, Strayhorn presented a sight no sane man save a member of our tribe ever would have conceived of.
When Turpin discovered him at the door of the tent, and summoned him to appear, he reluctantly complied with the request; but when, in a half-bantering vein, Dick began to rally him upon his pretensions, he would most gladly have retreated, had it been in his power.
She would sit smilingly by when the conflicts of the morning were sometimes renewed, for she saw with satisfaction that Anna at least was certainly impressed with Cuthbert's arguments and banter, and afforded very feeble aid to Mary Brander in her defense of their opinions.
In this second examination he had two inquisitors to answer, of whom the young lady pressed him so unmercifully by her arch bantering, that he at length found it advisable to recall his former denial, and confess that he was not particularly desirous of sleeping there again.
I looked with disgust at this woman, wrapped up in herself, licking her greasy fingers, chuckling, bantering the dying girl with her mouth full, and casting at me sullen and cynical glances, those desperate glances which certain old women yet have in their reddened eyes.
She had for me neither love nor dislike, which was quite natural; but being young and disposed to enjoy myself I had become, without any willful malice on her part, an eye-sore to her and the butt of her bantering jokes, which my sensitiveness exaggerated greatly.
He talked a great deal and exerted himself to make the sisters talk likewise, bantering Molly into scornful and eager retorts, and preventing Madeleine from relapsing into that state of dreaminess out of which the rapid succession of her recent sorrow and joy had somewhat shaken her.
She had adopted, and she successfully maintained, a note as affectionately impersonal as his own; she wrote ardently of her work, she questioned him about his, she even bantered him on the inevitable pretty girl who was certain before long to divert the current of his confidences.
The riders came from their bunk-houses, yawning, sloshing a hasty toilet at a trough with good-natured banter, hurrying on to the shack, where Joe tendered them the prodigious array of viands provided by Pedro, who waited himself on the three partners and the girl, at the ranch-house.
In spite of her quick bantering words there was something in the girl which made him think she was laboring under some intense excitement, and that it was this very excitement that was buoying her up and lending her a brilliancy that was almost unnatural.
Fearful of the higher rents that more modern quarters exacted, they went on paying their monthly stipend to old Ezekiel Warren, with such regularity as circumstances would admit, and made no effort to escape the affectionate banter that grouped them under the common name of the Bunnies.
Not having time to think about it, however, I merely, in a sort of bantering desperation, signified my readiness to undertake a voyage to any part of the undiscovered world, at any moment he (Mr Coral) might think proper, and then vanished, to prepare myself for the voyage.
Still, I felt more ridiculous than I had ever thought I could be, when, on reaching the foot, I received the bantering congratulations of the others; and my assistant, with a bow, assured me 'that we had effected our descent with the agility and grace of two antelopes!'
Picturesque foreign women going about with shawls over their heads and usually a bit of bright color somewhere, children at their games, hawkers loudly crying their stale wares, the click of sewing-machines heard through a broken window, everywhere animation, life, exchange of rough or kindly banter.
As the two walked along they were suddenly aware of a lithe figure approaching from the rear; with a running leap and an exclamation of delight the figure forced itself in between them, grasping an arm of either man, and a bantering voice broke in upon their train of talk.
The respect due to age takes from our hands those weapons of sarcasm, banter, or even blunt interruption which are our natural defenses against obtrusive youth; nor do I know of any general directions which can help a host or hostess in this grave and not uncommon difficulty.
Never for any grace gone astray is she bantered, never for the social extravagances, for prattle, or for beloved dress; but always for her jealousy, and for the repulsive person of the man upon whom she spies and in whom she vindicates her ignoble rights.
Anything more genial than the garrulous banter of Eugene Thrush, at his best, it was impossible to encounter or incur; he had been, however, for a few minutes at his worst, and it was difficult to see why the pendulum should have swung so suddenly to the other extreme.
All strong feeling, even of the purest, he hid away, and hardened over: he always thought of poets and actors, who let on the waterworks of their emotions to play for show; and there was no one, on the whole, at whom he bantered so much as at himself.
To the end of his days he retained a strongly-marked German pronunciation of the English language, which gave additional flavor to the banters and jests uttered in his fine bass voice; but he wrote in English with great purity on matters of affection and business long before middle life.
Raillery, banter, sarcasm, jest, irony light and grave, the whole artillery of wit, is always at his command; and though to our taste many of his jokes are coarse, others dull, and others unfair or in bad taste, yet the Romans were never tired of extolling them.
Now, the reader must have observed that of all people practical jokers are those who can least tolerate a practical joke played at their own expense, and that those whose staple of conversation is banter or "chaff" become irascible the moment they are flicked with their own whip.
He came so close before he spoke her name that she turned toward him with a start, as though he wakened her suddenly out of somnambulism, but even as she wheeled, her face brightened and a bantering merriment sounded in her voice, countering all his solicitous inquiries with gay retorts.
Such was the peculiar style of banter to which he was sure to be subjected, whenever he went into company; and in a short time he abstained from visits, and devoted his time to perfecting himself in his nautical studies, and making diligent inquiries after vessels bound round Cape Horn.
His vociferous preaching and pungent zeal drew large crowds, but at times his path was not strewn with primroses, and the rougher element of the Irish throngs offered battle at times to his vaunting banters, but nothing was more to the liking of the indomitable Lorenzo.
They first bantered the gentleman to run a foot race, jump, pitch the mall, or wrestle; and if none of these propositions seemed agreeable to him, they would request to know what he would do in case another gentleman should pull his nose or squirt tobacco juice in his face.
He was deeply vexed because his troops had not stood fire, and expressed himself with so much freedom and disgust, that the French officers kept bantering him without mercy at the timidity of his soldiers, soothing their own wounded pride by laughing at his mortification.
Quincy replied in the same tone of banter: "Knowing that you, fair lady, are ever thinking of me, and that my name is ever upon your fair lips in prayer, will spur me to renewed effort, for surely no cavalier ever had a more lovely mistress or a greater incentive to knightly action."
It never occurred to Mrs Twitter that this sensitiveness was very much the cause of his fall and disappearance, for the same weakness, or cowardice, that rendered him unable to resist the playful banter of his drinking comrades, prevented him from returning to his family in disgrace.
That morning, without the slightest idea of what fate had in store for them, they had been together, exchanging jest and banter; now one of their comrades was a captive in the power of desperate brigands, and they were on their way to save him or die with him.
"I should have thought you could put those awful clothes on in half the time you've taken, Johann, but you were always slow in dressing," she bantered; and I was quite content to be chipped for a time until she was ready to come to the discussion of our own affairs.
This feeling preyed on his poor mind, and when he joined the evening gathering in the village street he noted bitterly how contemptuously he was left out of the conversation by the others, how incapable he was of keeping pace with them in their laughing talk and banter.
On the way down, and in the field itself, the usual good-natured banter was largely indulged in, and as football enthusiasts, like the rest of impatient spectators, are only human, they were in better temper at the start of the contest than was the case at the finish.
They quickened their pace, and Philip talked with a cheery banter, so that, when they reached the veranda, Patty was her own smiling, merry self, and she felt profoundly grateful to Philip because he had not again referred to the bit of conversation they had overheard.
As soon as he had finished his vehement harangue, he threw himself again upon the mats, and, singling out individuals in the crowd, addressed them by name, in a sort of bantering style, the humor of which, though nearly hidden from me filled the whole assembly with uproarious delight.
A friend having bantered him on the subject of his remaining so long in a state of single blessedness, took an opportunity of questioning him about it, and in the course of a familiar chat, asked him why he remained so long single, when he stood so much in need of a help-mate.
Every three months the fifteen hundred francs were remitted to the servant, and she disposed of them to the best interests of the house; bought and paid for everything with the strictest economy, for she was of so saving a disposition that they bantered her about it continually.
The savage spurned the worthless rags, and perceiving that the shawl had already become a prize to another, his bantering but sullen smile changing to a gleam of ferocity, he dashed the head of the infant against a rock, and cast its quivering remains to her very feet.
By no means the least original feature of his work is this passionate and incisive argument, in which, with a remarkable power of dialectic, and at times in a tone of lively banter, he endeavored to remove "this comfortable pillow from those who have not the courage to inquire into its fundamental nature."
Then, spent as he was, he requested food and drink, and as he joined the band of outlaws, listening to their jokes and banter, he thought he could discern among them many a one whom Fate had, like himself, buffeted into a life, not of his forming, not of his choice.
She had acquired from her husband, at first in joke and loving banter of her early cares of housekeeping, while they were still no more than married lovers, the name of Martha, and by degrees that name had so fastened to her that no one recognized her by any other.
A minute or two was then passed in banter and conversation, designed to thoroughly engage her attention, when all at once she commenced to wipe her mouth with her handkerchief and to spit and sputter with her tongue and lips, as if to rid herself of some offensive taste or substance.
More than once the common-sense which he bantered me about setting too high a value upon, was blinded, and I was led on by wily steps into the enchanted regions of romance, and penetrated by their subtle influence, gave words to my thoughts before I recollected and was on guard again.
The minstrel darted after, and straightway recovered his elusive prize, flew up to his perch, and again roused the echoes of woodland and vale with his rollicking song, the paper harp imparting a peculiar resonance to his tones; while his air of banter seemed to challenge me to a musical contest.